Diners purchasing meals to go from restaurants, fast food outlets, delicatessens and similar establishments are often planning to eat their food at some location other than their dining room tables. Often they plan to eat in their cars, at a picnic table, at a sporting event or even in front of their televisions. All of these locations lack a clean and convenient place to rest their food while eating it. It would be desirable to have a large and impervious placemat on which to eat the food transported to such a location. Rather than pack along a separate placemat, several attempts have been made to convert a bag used to transport the food into a placemat. Some of these attempts to solve this problem are discussed here.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,998,882, issued to Fisher et al., discloses a bag suitable for carrying sandwich-type foods from a fast food or convenience store. The bag has an open end and an opposite closed end with a front panel and a back panel that are connected together by gusseted side panels. The front panel is provided with lines of perforations forming a weakness the lines being parallel and spaced apart a small distance. Perforations are designed to allow for consistent opening while minimizing premature opening or tearing of the panel. The narrow strip between the perforations is a ripping strip to ease opening of the bag the ripping strip has a pull-tab. Pulling the tab and ripping the ripping strip exposes the bag's interior and the food items therein. The torn bag can be used as a placemat or a receptacle for the food items.
U.S. Patent Application No. 2007/0258662, published for Venditti is directed to a container that can be readily transformed into a mat providing a safe resting surface for the contents of the container. The container preferably made out of paper, cardboard, plastic, foil, metal, or wood is in the form of a bag or box. The container can be used for food or automotive products, hardware products, medical products, toys, and the like. The container has a flat bottom, opposing spaced apart first and second sides and opposing spaced apart first and second faces. A first line of perforations vertically extend from the open end of the container to a second line of perforations that are horizontally disposed about the perimeter of the container near the bottom. For use of the container the perforations are opened leaving the items in the container in the resulting bottom tray. The sides of the container can be used as a mat providing a clean surface for the contents of the container.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,618,992, issued to La Grotteria illustrates two embodiments of a bag that is convertible to a placemat. The first embodiment is a bag with a flat bottom having a vertical line of perforations on one sidewall and a line of perforations at the bottom of three of the sidewalls. When it is desired to have a placemat the bag can be set down with the contents inside and the perforations separated forming a placemat. The second type of bag has a folded end rather than a flat bottom. The bag has a vertical line of perforations on one sidewall and a line of perforations near the bottom. When both lines of perforations are separated the bag can be laid flat forming a placemat.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,609,901, issued to Geddes et al. disclose a perforated package of composite material for packaging and maintaining foodstuffs in a hot and palatable condition. The invention is a perforated package made from a composite integral sheet material formed into a bag which has at least one area of perforation allowing a portion of the bag to be drawn back providing easy access to the article contained therein. Preferably the perforated area comprises two parallel lines preferably located along or closely adjacent to the edges of the package. In use the food product preferably hot is put into the bag, the opened end is sealed and the bag with the foodstuff in it is given to a customer. The bag may be used in a variety of ways by the customer. If the customer pulls the side panel down along the perforations he provides a surface upon which the food article rests. The bag provides a sanitary surface which has not been previously handled.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,484,350, issued to Gordon is directed to a glueless paper bag that is formed from a single sheet of paper or similar flexible sheet material. The blank is formed or otherwise provided with eight relatively spaced apart parallel fold lines that extend longitudinally the full length of the blank. The blank is folded along the lines to form a rectangular open ended tube. The tube is folded transversely along a pair of relatively spaced transverse fold lines forming generally rectangular and relatively adjoining sections, a forward open-mouthed bag section, a multiple ply backing section and a multiple ply tuck and locking section. By folding the backing section upwardly against the rear or inner wall of the bag section and then tucking the locking section downwardly into the open mouth of the bag section and into overlying relation to the backing section provides a condition with the smooth and interrupted outer panel of the blank is outermost and relatively interlocking, interleaved, free edges of the blank are fully covered and held against accidental separation. The device may be used as a carryout bag for food items and upon arrival at a convenient eating spot may be easily unfolded into its flat length condition and used as a doily, napkin or bib.
It is an objective of the present invention to provide a convenient and spacious carry bag formed of impervious material for the transport of food items. It is a further objective to provide such a bag that can be readily converted to a sanitary placemat suitable for dining upon. It is a still further objective of the invention that the resulting placemat be completely flat and suitable for folding and storage for later use. Finally, it is an objective of the present invention to provide such bag that is inexpensive to manufacture and easy to carry when loaded and yet stores flat when empty.
While some of the objectives of the present invention are disclosed in the prior art, none of the inventions found include all of the requirements identified.